This is an excerpt from Thinking of WWDC in which I discussed Swift as Open Source and suggested the need for a Swift Foundation that would run a Swift Conference, run swift.org, and serve the greater Swift community as an independent organization.

In the original essay I talked about Apple and their work on Swift. "But Daniel," you ask, "isn't Swift open source?"

It is. In my opinion, Apple has been a great steward for the language and has honored the Open Source aspect of the language.

I don't mind Apple making sure that Swift meets their needs - Apple engineers do most (by a large margin) of the work on Swift.

And yet, it is undeniable...

Swift is Open Source.

But, if Apple wants Swift to be perceived as anything other than an Apple technology, it needs to do some work.

I noted the flurry of activity on Swift Evolution that you see a couple of months before WWDC. There are also sessions at WWDC on what's new in Swift and in-depth sessions by members of the core team.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have these sessions. We should. They are some of my favorites. I always look for the sessions by Holly, Ben, and Doug and watch them multiple times.

What I'm saying is that as long as the Swift announcements are mostly made at the Apple Developer conference, it will be seen to be an Apple technology.

So that's why this section is in my WWDC thoughts. Advancements in Swift and WWDC need to be decoupled.

There needs to be at least one Swift conference, probably late in the year as the Swift 6.3 proposals are being finalized. There probably needs to be a Swift Foundation that is run independently but funded by Apple. There need to be non-Apple employees leading the foundation.

Of course it's right and proper that Apple has a big say in the Foundation, but if Apple truly wants Swift to be thought of as a language that is not just for and by Apple, they need to take steps in that direction.

That Foundation would run the conference, manage and release official publications on Swift, and take over swift.org and run it as a vibrant, independent, living website that highlights all Swift activity.